Immortal Memory
by Virgin Oracle
Summary: Thalia remembers. She has lost track of the years, and the world and people she knew as a mortal have long since passed. But the memories of those she has known and lost are as poignant, painful, and cherished. She wishes she could keep them to herself sometimes, but she is the last living demigod from the age of the great prophecies. These are her legends and legacy.
1. Chapter 1

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Thick flakes whirl together, blurring the details of the landscape as firelight flickers between the shadows of pine trees. A soft glow of lamps illuminate the stand of square tents; icicles accumulated on the corners and stake lines capture quicksilver moments from their inhabitants. The clinks and scrapes of dinner have long since faded, though the majority of the group remain clustered around the lively fire. Their slight, hearty laughter bounds through snow-dampened night air. Some girls, for they are all girls, bustle around the camp, clearing up dinner.

The girls not busy with evening duties sit around the fire. The veterans laugh and banter freely, eager to have fresh ears for stories of which the rest of them have long since tired. They discovered several potential new recruits today, the first in a long while, so the pervading cheer and camaraderie is as warm as their fire and cocoa. The atmosphere is a welcome change of pace, as its been a particularly trying cold season. Some of the older veterans mention this, remembering when evenings such as this were once more commonplace, in the time before the Climate Shift.

These new girls are easy to spot, alternatively sipping hot cocoa and gazing in rapt attention at a girl seated against downed log at one end of the fire circle. Clustered together to the rear of the fire, they clutch their mugs tightly, looking rather intimidated by the boisterous confidence of their company, and not a little bit awed by the stories and banter of the more lustrous veteran Hunters.

The lead girl, raven hair highlighted by a simple silver circlet ghosting across her brow, grins as one of the hunters finishes the story of a hilariously ill-fated adventure. Her electric blue eyes twinkle in merriment. Thalia Grace leans leisurely against her log, utterly contented with the weight of the food in her belly and the warmth of the dancing flames. She grins and teases her lieutenant, adding details or commentary when the latter pauses for breath.

Her lieutenant, with hair dark enough to rival the shade of her own, gray eyes bright with wit, weaves stories as masterfully as her mother built monuments. Sofia sasses the gods equally and with such good humor, that she has become the ideal choice to passes on the oral epic that is their immortal legacies to the younger girls.

There is no method or order to the stories, just as there very rarely is rational decisions behind the plots (the gods are fickle after all). Mostly Sofia begins with whatever story pops into her wildly active mind first and runs with it. Sometimes girls will ask questions or request explanations that foster a flow to the chaotic dramas of the gods and their children.

One of the girls, a 16 year old with auburn hair and the telltale gray eyes of Wisdom's daughters, pipes in with a question. She wants to know how Thalia came to be Artemis's lead Hunter. And without too much transition, the stories steamroll into the era of the modern heroes. Thalia feels like a ton of bricks have settled on her chest. Faces she hasn't thought about in years drift from the recesses of her memory.

Sofia glances at her. Sofia can, of course, as she heard the stories from her mother. But Thalia was one of the few Hunters alive then, during the last great wars between the immortals. She had fought, dined, and quested with many of the heroes who lived and died in those battles. Sofia had known many of them of course, but not all. She had never even met her father, whom Thalia had held with all the fondness of her blood brother. She'd never had the chance to actually tell him that...

The new recruits eventually have to hear the 'new myths', as her Hunters have taken to calling them. Only to her they're not myths at all. They're memories. Loved ones long since outlived, long since legendary. It should fall to Thalia to tell the stories of her old friends. She is not prepared.

She maintains her composition, though her grin must slip a little. She excuses herself, promising the girl with the grey eyes-suddenly too familiar-that she will tell them the stories of the Second Titan and Giant wars when she returns. She walks away with the pretense of relieving herself. She takes a trowel and ventures beyond the ring of light, into the forest. Sofia's voice rings out behind her, launching into the heroes and villains of the First World War.

Thalia leans heavily against a tree. Her eyes slip into the distant inkiness of the surrounding forest as she remembers. Gods, how long has it been since she's thought about them? Probably the last time they had new recruits. Shit, its been awhile. She rubs her temples as her thoughts slip back to the past. When you're immortal you can afford to live 100% in the moment, but she learned a long time ago that such a life means that you lose track of those limited by decades.

The stories must eventually always reach the one. How Thalia became Artemis's head Hunter; Zoe's death and the prophecy Thalia avoided. How Percy Jackson came to hold that mantle himself. When they had fought the Titan Atlas, just months–no, she corrects herself, a couple years–before the Second Titan War. When she herself had first led the Hunters into war, at the Battle of Manhattan. When Luke, Percy, and Annabeth had first become heroes of the modern epic. My friends, she reminds herself. They were my friends, my family. She is all too intimately familiar with this period of history.

Gods, she should be over this by now. The pang of mourning and longing. She checks her watch, which she started wearing so that she could no longer entirely forget the passage of years. The readout blinks, 2299. Almost three centuries have passed since she first led her troops into the Battle of Manhattan. How long had it been since she'd visited Jason's tomb? The memorial?

Visions come rushing back to her now. Puerto Rico, the Second Giant War, the final battle against Gaea and everything that came after. The great and terrible moments flash to her like freeze frames in a film. The daughers of Bellona. Phoebe's death first, the slaughter of her hunters and the Amazons, all at the hands of Orion. She shudders at the memory of the carnage. So many of her Hunters, so many funeral pyres they'd had to construct...

They had been so delayed at Puerto Rico that Thalia had not been able to return to Camp Half-Blood until well after the final battle. The bodies and residual monster dust had long been cleared away, the funeral pyres for the demigods long since burnt. The Romans had already returned to Camp Jupiter, but testaments to their fallen lay amongst those of the Greeks. Most of those who had died she hadn't known, but she had remembered the small, hyperactive Latino friend of Jason's. He had so vexed Phoebe. Her brother, Jason and his then-girlfriend Piper, had been despondent at the loss of their best friend.

She had almost cried with joyful relief when she had finally found Percy and Annabeth. The last she had heard of them, they had been about to battle an army of giants, fresh from Tartarus. They had both embraced her, though she delivered a little bit of a shock to Percy. Might have punched him a bit too. She had searched for that little shit for months, after all. But they too, appeared weary at the loss of their friend.

Of course Leo eventually made his way back, she reminds herself. Triumphantly astride the back of his bronze dragon, with a beautiful girlfriend no less. With a pang, she realizes that she can't recall if Percy ever saw his friend again. He died just before finishing college, just before his 21st birthday.

She sighs and rubs her eyes. She wishes she could forget how he died. Torn to pieces by that malicious sorceror, Setne, and his bastard hybrid monsters. To his last breath, defending Annabeth against an enemy no one had foreseen. Thalia, much to her own guilt later, hadn't even heard the news until about a year after the fact. Many months later she appeared at Camp Half-Blood, only to find Annabeth still so raw and grieved.

She'll have to tell that story too. That battle had revealed the extent of the world's mythos, as well as awakened the mortals embroiled within them to each other. Though still predominantly Greek, her own Hunters also sported a few Romans, an Egyptian magician, and a Berserker. The recruits will need to know how the Hunters know of the spheres of immortal presences, but the importance to keep it a well-hiddened secret.

Annabeth had told her the details of the battle, several years later, after Sophia had been born. She had spiraled viciously after Percy's death. Alternatively inconsolable and then entirely consumed with her work, she had been almost unreachable to all but Piper. The daugher of Aphrodite could calm Annabeth with a few words, soothe her pain for at least a few moments.

Annabeth's pain and loss manifested itself for years in her work. Though Thalia keeps few tabs on the mortal world, she can still identify with a glance the buildings Annabeth designed in that dark limbo. All so twisted, broken with nostalgia for the sea.

If Thalia ever thanked the gods for anything, it was for sending Sofia into her friend's life. When Annabeth was 26 (27? Eh, it doesn't matter), the gurgling bundle had appeared at her hearth. Of course, she was living in an modern apartment in downtown San Franciso at the time, so lacking a hearth, Sofia arrived instead floating in the bathtub.

If she'd had any confusion as to the parentage of the child, any such doubts were instantly dispelled when she pulled the child from the water, where'd she'd been floating several inches under the surface. She had a trail of drool running from slackened mouth, black hair sticking up impossibly dry. The baby stretched, blinked once to regard Annabeth with steel grey, green-flecked eyes, and proceeded to scream with indignant hunger. She imagined Percy just then, muttering 'Well, she's got your lungs,' before grabbing their daughter and scampering away. When she told Thalia about it a couple days later, Thalia knew her friend would be alright.

Thalia smiles at the miracle of her goddaughter, Sofia. She assuredly incorporated all that Annabeth had cherished about Percy, all that was bright and beautiful about him. His eyes, hair, joie-de-vivre, and energy. All of her intelligence and agility. Their living legacy. Those were Piper's words of course.

Sofia was practically another neice to Thalia, at this point they were certainly closer than she'd been with any of Jason's heathen brood. He'd protested every time she came to visit. She, chasing and calling them his pagan monster godspawn; they, shrieking with laughter and running from her in feigned terror. Piper would always just laugh and say she was a non-practicing pagan.

She watched as Jason grew old with Piper, as they became grandparents. She applauded Annabeth at her Pritzker Prize award ceremony, and for her Gold Medal, and for whatever ever other honors she garnered (what an overachiever). She saluted Reyna at her funeral. She'd bid Nico farewell as he left the world of the living forever. She witnessed the unveiling of Annabeth's final project, the Giants War Monument.

Thalia stealed herself. She never became close with the other members of the Seven. But she owed it to them, the Seven, the heroes of the Titan and Giant wars, her friends. She owed it to Sophia, Percy and Annabeth's greatest legacy (in Annabeth's words). As the final surviving demigod from those tumultuous years, it fell to her to ensure that this new generation knew the names and deeds of their predecessors. That they were never forgotten. She will be their testament, their Homer.

She sends a silent prayer of thanks to her father and Artemis, as well as a prayer of wellwishing down to Hades. She knows she will meet with them someday.

She watches the mist from her breathe spiral away, into the tranquil darkness of the woods. And she turns back to the fire.


	2. Author's Note

So I started writing this story after reading a headcannon/prompt about the idea on Tumblr. I have no idea where I read it, or whose idea it was originally. I was just struck by this image of Thalia having to tell stories of these modern demigod heroes to her new Hunters. Heroes with whom she sparred and shared s'mores and shed blood/tears. I can only imagine how painful that might be, having to outlive all the people you grew up with and pass on their stories as oral history.

Anyway, I envisioned this story as happening about 300 years after the events of Blood of Olympus. And yes, I wrote that Percy dies not too long after the Giant War, battling Setne as a matter of fact. I also like to think that the Hunters started broadening their recruitment pool, particularly after the Orion massacre at Puerto Rico. So I have them with Viking, Roman, and Egyptian girls now too.

I apologize if I didn't really portray Thalia and her frame of thought well. I was trying to keep it mostly introspective. I know she doesn't come off as strongly emotional or introspective in the books, but in Sword of Hades she seemed decently haunted by the ghost of her mother (as did Jason later by the way), so I would like to think that she honored the memories of her friends with some silent thoughts and prayers for them.


End file.
